Influence of affective instability on suicidal ideation beyond traumatic brain injury and posttraumatic stress disorder in veterans.

OBJECTIVE: Mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) is associated with long-term consequences, including greater risk for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suicidal ideation. Affective instability is also independently related to PTSD and suicidality, which may explain why some individuals continue to experience chronic psychiatric complaints following mild TBI. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate affective instability as a key factor for PTSD and suicidal ideation among Veterans with and without TBI. METHOD: Participants (N = 299 Veterans; 86.96% male) completed the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) and structured clinical interviews for TBI and psychiatric diagnoses. Hierarchical linear regression was used to evaluate main and interaction effects. RESULTS: There were no significant differences in affective instability (p = 0.140) or suicidal ideation (p = 0.453) between Veterans with or without TBI. Individuals with TBI were more likely to have a PTSD diagnosis (p = 0.001). Analyses evaluating PTSD diagnosis as an outcome indicated a main effect of affective instability (p < 0.001), but not TBI (p = 0.619). Analyses evaluating suicidal ideation as an outcome demonstrated an interaction effect between PTSD and affective instability beyond the effects of TBI (p = 0.034). CONCLUSIONS: Severe Affective instability appears to be a key factor in suicidal ideation among Veterans beyond TBI or PTSD history. PTSD was more strongly associated with suicidality at lower and moderate levels of affective instability. At severe levels of affective instability, however, Veterans with and without PTSD experienced suicidal ideation at similar rates. Findings suggests that high levels of affective instability not better explained by other psychiatric conditions confers similar suicidality risk to that of PTSD in a Veteran population.

The effects of cognitive reappraisal and sleep on emotional memory formation.

Emotion regulation (i.e. either up- or down-regulating affective responses to emotional stimuli) has been shown to modulate long-term emotional memory formation. Further, research has demonstrated that the emotional aspects of scenes are preferentially remembered relative to neutral aspects (known as the emotional memory trade-off effect). This trade-off is often enhanced when sleep follows learning, compared to an equivalent period of time spent awake. However, the interactive effects of sleep and emotion regulation on emotional memory are poorly understood. We presented 87 participants with pictures of neutral or negative objects on neutral backgrounds paired with instructions to either increase or decrease their emotional response by altering personal relevance, or to passively view the stimuli. Following a 12 h period of sleep or wakefulness, participants were tested for their memory of objects and backgrounds separately. Although we replicated the emotional memory trade-off effect, no differences in the magnitude of the trade-off effect were observed between regulation conditions. Sleep improved all aspects of memory, but it did not preferentially benefit memory for emotional components of scenes. Irrespective of a period of sleep or wake following encoding, findings suggest emotion regulation during encoding did not influence memory for emotional items at a 12-hour delay.

Within-person changes in religiosity, control beliefs, and subjective well-being across middle and late adulthood.

Given the well-established link between control beliefs and well-being, researchers have turned their attention to characterizing mechanisms that help foster this relationship across the second half of life. Cross-sectional, empirical work has identified a mediating relationship among religiosity and spirituality (R/S), control beliefs, and subjective well-being, such that individuals with higher R/S show higher subjective well-being that is mediated by between-person differences in perceived control. Empirical tests of between-person differences, however, may not represent within-person associations. As such, the present study utilized longitudinal data from the Notre Dame Study of Health & Well-being (NDHWB; N = 1,017) to examine concurrent, within-person associations among three R/S dimensions (i.e., religious coping, religious practices, and spirituality), control beliefs, and subjective well-being. Results from our Bayesian multilevel mediation analyses showed significant within-person associations among these constructs, suggesting potential bidirectionality and circularity in these processes. Cross-sectional age differences and time significantly moderated these associations. In terms of age differences, younger, compared to older, individuals showed stronger positive associations among religious coping and spirituality, control beliefs, and subjective well-being and more negative associations among religious practices, control beliefs, and subjective well-being. Contrarily, the effect of time implied that the relationships among religious coping and spirituality, control beliefs, and subjective well-being became more positive across time. Given this disjunction and that the moderating effect of cross-sectional age by time was not significant, cross-sectional age differences in these relationships likely reflect generational differences in the associations among R/S, control beliefs, and subjective well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Anxious, but not depressive, symptoms are associated with poorer prospective memory performance in healthy college students: Preliminary evidence using the tripartite model of anxiety and depression.

Prospective memory (PM) - or memory for tasks to be completed in the future - is essential for daily functioning. Although depression and anxiety have been shown to impair PM performance, few studies have explored the relative contributions of different symptom domains. Here, we examined the relation between anxiety, depression, negative mood, and PM performance using the tripartite model. The tripartite model attributes the substantial overlap between anxiety and depression to general distress/negative affect. Twenty-seven non-diagnosed undergraduate participants first completed self-report measures of depression (Beck Depression Inventory-II), anxiety (Beck Anxiety Inventory [BAI], State Trait Anxiety Inventory [STAI]), and affect (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule). They were then given an event-based PM instruction to be completed during three ongoing cognitive tasks. Depressive symptoms and positive affect were unrelated to PM performance. Higher anxiety symptoms (BAI, r = -0.62; STAI, r = -0.41) and negative affect (r = -0.45) were associated with poorer PM performance, with anxiety doubling the variance explained over-and-above negative affect ( Δ R2 = 0.20). These preliminary results suggest that anxiety symptoms may be uniquely related to impairments in PM function, and highlight the need for future studies to consider the individual contributions of symptoms to understand changes in cognition and behavior.

Effects of intranasal oxytocin on steroid hormones in men and women.

BACKGROUND: Recent interest in the social and cognitive effects of intranasal oxytocin prompts a need for understanding its physiological effects in humans. Few studies have examined the effects of intranasal oxytocin on steroid hormones. Filling this gap is especially important given the evidence that steroid hormones participate in some of the same behavioral functions as oxytocin, e.g. in stress, processing of emotional stimuli, aggression, trust, empathy, and parental care. METHODS: In randomized, double-blind experiments, we administered oxytocin (24 IU) or saline placebo to 97 healthy participants. Saliva samples were collected before and at several time points after the oxytocin/placebo administration to assess the levels of cortisol, progesterone, and testosterone. RESULTS: Oxytocin had no effects on testosterone, progesterone, or cortisol in women or men. CONCLUSION: Acute intranasal oxytocin does not affect the levels of cortisol, testosterone or progesterone in humans, at least in the absence of a stressful context. These data suggest that acute oxytocin does not have a direct impact on the human hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal or hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axes under nonstressful circumstances. This knowledge helps rule out potential mechanisms for some of the effects of oxytocin in humans and adds to the generally limited body of knowledge on the basic physiological or psychological effects of intranasal oxytocin in human beings.